Mafia Capital (WWC XIII): Important Info Here -- READ OPENING POSTS!

[AvatarVecna]

Sure. Put me down for
Among Who? Among Us!

Added.

There was a hilarious variant game I wanted to run:

Wilder West WW: Wait, who shot the sheriff?

Throw me on the queue whenever.

Added.

That sounds fun. I've also considered this.

Is bastard game a catch all for games designed to piss of players or does it mean something specific?

Bastard Mod

[gac3]

Added.



Added.



Bastard Mod

Welp. My "Words of Power" or whatever I said I was going to call it is definitely a bastard game.

[AvatarVecna]

Craziest Idea is recruiting.

[Book Wombat]

Thinking of narrating a game based on the webnovel "The Lord of Mysteries".
Are Roles that each "evolve" at the end of every Night Phase fine? They still stay within the same theme, have generally one active power and an inactive passive power at the start. At the end of every odd Night (Dawn) most players gain an upgrade or change to their passive power while at the every even Dawn an upgrade or change to their active.

[rogue_alchemist]

that should work, so long as the balance of power amoung the roles doesn't change with the upgrades (aka don't give 1 power a larger boost than another). Maybe give a single example to help people think through it.

[Book Wombat]

that should work, so long as the balance of power amoung the roles doesn't change with the upgrades (aka don't give 1 power a larger boost than another). Maybe give a single example to help people think through it.

In total there will be twenty-two Pathways with each nine Sequences. Sequence 9 is the lowest while Sequence 1 is the highest.

Examples for what I might do, feedback would be appreciated:

Demoness Pathway:

Sequence 9: Assassin
Assassinate (A): You may target one person at Night to kill.

Sequence 8: Instigator
Assassinate (A): You may target one person at Night to kill.
Instigate (P): Your vote counts as two votes.

Sequence 7: Witch
Dark Sorcery (A): You may target one person at Night, you can choose to either kill them or hide behind them (all powers originally targeting you will instead affect your target).
Instigate (P): Your vote counts as two votes.

Visionary Pathway:

Sequence 9: Spectator
Observe (A): You may target one person at Night at find out who they target.

Sequence 8: Telepathist
Observe (A): You may target one person at Night at find out who they target.
Sense Intent (P): You find out the alignment of one random person who voted for your target the previous Night.

Sequence 7: Psychiatrist
Psychic Manipulation (A): You may use one of the following powers every Night on on two targets, neither of which can be you:
- Psychological Cue: The next Day your first target will subconsciously (the player will not be aware) vote on your second target.
- Frenzy: This Night your first target will use their power on your second target, it doesn't matter if they originally targeted no one.
Sense Intent (P): You find out the alignment of one random person who voted for your target the previous Night.

Note: Priority/order would be added.

[MornShine]

Thinking through my aforementioned game idea.

In Werewolf games, what are plausible goals for neutrals? I’ve thought of the “keep someone (or most of several people) alive” and “make sure this person dies”, but anything other than that, especially that doesn’t require the person to be their own faction? Anyone have a good place (game?) to look at?

[bladescape]

Thinking through my aforementioned game idea.

In Werewolf games, what are plausible goals for neutrals? I’ve thought of the “keep someone (or most of several people) alive” and “make sure this person dies”, but anything other than that, especially that doesn’t require the person to be their own faction? Anyone have a good place (game?) to look at?

It's less about "Does it need to be their own faction" and more about "Is it more fun if they are their own faction."

[totadileplayz]

While those are a couple of examples there do exist others. Namely the tie and Access all QT'S of last game. Basically any mechanic of the game could be explored you could have a goal of convincing a target person to vote for someone else. Specific death conditions or Even Performing a specific action like protecting the jailer...

[AvatarVecna]

I think I vaguely recall a neutral role where they had to collect an ingame currency that nobody else cared about? I wanna say it was Drowlbearwolf?

[Xihirli]

Heyo, wassup.

[gac3]

I honestly don't remember which neutral roles and win cons I've actually seen versus were fake claims. But I've seen:

Neutral masons who have a power that effectively did nothing but they needed to use it on every living player to win.

Of course the kill/protect neutral roles

Neutrals that had to guess who would be lynched the following day to win.

.... And I'm blanking on the rest.

[Batcathat]

The term neutral makes me think of the old school D&D definition of True Neutral, where they were supposed to switch sides if one side of a conflict became too powerful. Maybe something could be done with that? Though I suppose it might be hard to achieve, since you'd basically have to figure out what side everyone's on in order to know when to support who.

[JeenLeen]

For Neutrals, I find the best combination of a neutral's aspects seems to be something like
1) it's something plausibly fun for at least most players
2) there's reason not to claim publicly
3) it's not overtly pro-wolf or pro-town OR, if it is, the overall game set-up uses that for balance.

For #1, you want it to be fun for the player. That's obvious.
For #2, this is important because otherwise the person can claim publicly D1 and there's no real incentive for any faction to kill them. I see this as a failure on EmmyNecromancer's Role. In the Cats Jellicle Ball game, the neutrals kinda proved the issue with this: they could safely claim and just play along, since their actions did nothing detrimental to anyone and nobody had incentive to kill them, and it effectively made the game at -2 players since nobody cared about the neutrals or had a real way to motivate them to join a faction. In contrast, my Role in Percy Jackson had some incentives to claim and it worked out, but the fear of retribution from the Zeuslings was a good counter.
For #3, you either should have the Neutral really be neutral with respect to the other faction OR have it balanced by another neutral OR have it balance a stronger faction. The first one is kinda obvious: I think all the real neutrals (and fakeclaimed ones, actually) in Percy Jackson were truly neutral: the win condition either didn't really impact the main factions or it was equally opposed to both. Another option is to have a pro-town neutral and a pro-wolf neutral, of about equivalent power. The third is to have a pro-Town neutral when the wolves seem stronger overall, or vice-versa.

The easiest way I've seen to make neutrals is one whose job is to find and kill a certain player. Usually with that setup, there's two neutrals (one hunting a townie, one hunting a wolf), so they balance against each other. The Huntress of Artemis Role is a fine example of this. (Not example of the balance, but example of a 'find and kill my target' Role.)
I've also seen it where the neutrals are opposed to each other. In our first game since the Mafia subforum revived, there were two neutrals with the same Role. They knew the other neutral existed, but not who they were, and their win-con was to survive while the other one died. I think their power was a scry to see if the person targeted was their target, but they had no direct way to kill the person.
EDIT: I personally don't like having those neutral Roles, but I know some folk enjoy them.
And there's the common Survivor or Serial Killer, but some find the former too boring and the latter too hard to win as (though it does happen.) I think you can't have a good game with just a neutral Survivor, since then they can claim D1 and nobody wants to kill them; you need the tension that folk might suspect a neutral-claim as really being the serial killer to keep the tension going.

There's also a question of what happens if a win-con is met. Do they exit the game, or stay? I like how gac3 handled that in the Percy Jackson game, letting the neutral choose.

Funny example: in a... something like we were the supervillains and the wolves were the heroes... there was a neutral who was hunting a villain. He scried his target early (maybe N1) and then claimed seer and got this target lynched. We did the usual wording of "this sounds iffy, but it is a seer claim. If the seer is lying, we lynch him tomorrow as a wolf". Well, we lynched a townie and the neutral got to exit the game as victorious. It was a good play.

EDIT: a neutral idea I really like, but haven't seen in play, is one who has a goal that could help wolves or town, but is 'annoying' or 'troublesome' in a way that makes it a disincentive to claim.
E.g., in the X-Men game, I fakeclaimed Gambit (styled as a thief) with the power to target someone and steal something off them, that interfered with their power usage. By targeting Cyclops, would steal his visor, so instead of controlling his Night power (void or kill), he could only use the kill setting. By targeting Magneto, I steal his helmet and he can be scried by telepaths. Imagined win-con was to steal 3 items.
A Role that like could side with Town or Wolf, based on who they target. It seems fun. It also has a disincentive to claim since it could royally screw either faction's plans, so they might waste a lynch or NK to get him out of the game.
A lesser version could be the Jellice Ball neutrals, if their "theft" did something like also steal the vote for the next day. (Their win-con was to have stolen something from every living player at endgame. There were two neutrals in a mason chat, and they could each target someone each Night. So not really hard unless they kept hitting the NKs, but since the stealing did nothing, they figured out they should just claim and became a basically irrelevant faction. I think seeing them in play started the first real discussion I've seen on "neutral crafting theory" (so to speak).)

[Book Wombat]

...
Examples for what I might do, feedback would be appreciated:
...

Any thoughts?

[Rogan]

Any thoughts?

Sequence 7: Witch
Dark Sorcery (A): You may target one person at Night, you can choose to either kill them or hide behind them (all powers originally targeting you will instead affect your target).
Instigate (P): Your vote counts as two votes.

In Gacs game, the hiding power had a drawback of not preventing death. I think, such a drawback would be important. Otherwise, depending on priorities of powers, hiding would make you immune to night kills/powers.

Visionary Pathway:

Sequence 9: Spectator
Observe (A): You may target one person at Night at find out who they target.

Sequence 8: Telepathist
Observe (A): You may target one person at Night at find out who they target.
Sense Intent (P): You find out the alignment of one random person who voted for your target the previous Night.

Sequence 7: Psychiatrist
Psychic Manipulation (A): You may use one of the following powers every Night on on two targets, neither of which can be you:
- Psychological Cue: The next Day your first target will subconsciously (the player will not be aware) vote on your second target.
- Frenzy: This Night your first target will use their power on your second target, it doesn't matter if they originally targeted no one.
Sense Intent (P): You find out the alignment of one random person who voted for your target the previous Night.

The sequence 7 power feels strange. Before, you had an info gathering role. Now you suddenly won't get the same kind of info anymore but instead you can manipulate your targets. It's not an updated to an existing power, it's not a new option you can choose to use, it's a straight up replacement for something you used to have.

[gac3]

For Neutrals, I find the best combination of a neutral's aspects seems to be something like
1) it's something plausibly fun for at least most players
2) there's reason not to claim publicly
3) it's not overtly pro-wolf or pro-town OR, if it is, the overall game set-up uses that for balance.

For #1, you want it to be fun for the player. That's obvious.
For #2, this is important because otherwise the person can claim publicly D1 and there's no real incentive for any faction to kill them. I see this as a failure on EmmyNecromancer's Role. In the Cats Jellicle Ball game, the neutrals kinda proved the issue with this: they could safely claim and just play along, since their actions did nothing detrimental to anyone and nobody had incentive to kill them, and it effectively made the game at -2 players since nobody cared about the neutrals or had a real way to motivate them to join a faction. In contrast, my Role in Percy Jackson had some incentives to claim and it worked out, but the fear of retribution from the Zeuslings was a good counter.
For #3, you either should have the Neutral really be neutral with respect to the other faction OR have it balanced by another neutral OR have it balance a stronger faction. The first one is kinda obvious: I think all the real neutrals (and fakeclaimed ones, actually) in Percy Jackson were truly neutral: the win condition either didn't really impact the main factions or it was equally opposed to both. Another option is to have a pro-town neutral and a pro-wolf neutral, of about equivalent power. The third is to have a pro-Town neutral when the wolves seem stronger overall, or vice-versa.

The easiest way I've seen to make neutrals is one whose job is to find and kill a certain player. Usually with that setup, there's two neutrals (one hunting a townie, one hunting a wolf), so they balance against each other. The Huntress of Artemis Role is a fine example of this. (Not example of the balance, but example of a 'find and kill my target' Role.)
I've also seen it where the neutrals are opposed to each other. In our first game since the Mafia subforum revived, there were two neutrals with the same Role. They knew the other neutral existed, but not who they were, and their win-con was to survive while the other one died. I think their power was a scry to see if the person targeted was their target, but they had no direct way to kill the person.
EDIT: I personally don't like having those neutral Roles, but I know some folk enjoy them.
And there's the common Survivor or Serial Killer, but some find the former too boring and the latter too hard to win as (though it does happen.) I think you can't have a good game with just a neutral Survivor, since then they can claim D1 and nobody wants to kill them; you need the tension that folk might suspect a neutral-claim as really being the serial killer to keep the tension going.

There's also a question of what happens if a win-con is met. Do they exit the game, or stay? I like how gac3 handled that in the Percy Jackson game, letting the neutral choose.

Funny example: in a... something like we were the supervillains and the wolves were the heroes... there was a neutral who was hunting a villain. He scried his target early (maybe N1) and then claimed seer and got this target lynched. We did the usual wording of "this sounds iffy, but it is a seer claim. If the seer is lying, we lynch him tomorrow as a wolf". Well, we lynched a townie and the neutral got to exit the game as victorious. It was a good play.

EDIT: a neutral idea I really like, but haven't seen in play, is one who has a goal that could help wolves or town, but is 'annoying' or 'troublesome' in a way that makes it a disincentive to claim.
E.g., in the X-Men game, I fakeclaimed Gambit (styled as a thief) with the power to target someone and steal something off them, that interfered with their power usage. By targeting Cyclops, would steal his visor, so instead of controlling his Night power (void or kill), he could only use the kill setting. By targeting Magneto, I steal his helmet and he can be scried by telepaths. Imagined win-con was to steal 3 items.
A Role that like could side with Town or Wolf, based on who they target. It seems fun. It also has a disincentive to claim since it could royally screw either faction's plans, so they might waste a lynch or NK to get him out of the game.
A lesser version could be the Jellice Ball neutrals, if their "theft" did something like also steal the vote for the next day. (Their win-con was to have stolen something from every living player at endgame. There were two neutrals in a mason chat, and they could each target someone each Night. So not really hard unless they kept hitting the NKs, but since the stealing did nothing, they figured out they should just claim and became a basically irrelevant faction. I think seeing them in play started the first real discussion I've seen on "neutral crafting theory" (so to speak).)

I don't remember if I ever told anybody but your fake claim was essentially exactly what the Gambit role would have done.

[Book Wombat]

In Gacs game, the hiding power had a drawback of not preventing death. I think, such a drawback would be important. Otherwise, depending on priorities of powers, hiding would make you immune to night kills/powers.



The sequence 7 power feels strange. Before, you had an info gathering role. Now you suddenly won't get the same kind of info anymore but instead you can manipulate your targets. It's not an updated to an existing power, it's not a new option you can choose to use, it's a straight up replacement for something you used to have.

Make sense, will change. Thanks!

[Book Wombat]

Hey AV, could you add "The Tarot Club" to the Scheduled games? Unless something odd pops up I should manage.

[AvatarVecna]

Hey AV, could you add "The Tarot Club" to the Scheduled games? Unless something odd pops up I should manage.

Added to the queue.

[Rogan]

Make sense, will change. Thanks!

Your welcome.

Some more general thoughts about the setup:
I think powers/roles that get stronger as the game progresses sound interesting. But it will be harder to balance.
If one power starts weaker than the other, but has a faster growth, it might be worth it. But it will be something you have to pay close attention to.

[gac3]

Put me down for words of Power.

[AvatarVecna]

Put me down for words of Power.

In the queue.

[Arapocalypse]

Hi there!!

Heads up that Apogee's mafia championship game has randed, and will be starting tomorrow!!!

GAME 8: JUNE 21, 36/12, 12AM EDT EoD
Apogee (Giant in the Playground)
DeKay (The Sims Forum)
Dubz (Student Doctor Network)
evakyoo (Mafia42)
HumanDawn (Bulbagarden)
IBA (Good Gamery)
LightFoot (The Giraffe Boards)
Madagascarter (Dominating12
orangeandblack5 (Liars Club Online)
Raiyn (Werewolf (Mafia) Group/Discord Werewolf Sanitarium)
SadNixon (SecretHitler.io)
Sanse (Manga Helpers)
Sumazndude (Jesus Toast Mafia)
The Sun Fan (Zelda Dungeon)
TJ. (The TvM Hub)

You can follow it here: https: //www . mafiauniverse . com/forums/threads/31062-Season-8-Game-8-Twitch-TV-is-for-Gaming-The-Mafia-Championship (minus spaces!)

Do you wish to spectate and/or talk with players from other communities?
We have a big server on Discord (1,500+ members) for those that want to spectate and talk about these games. The representatives will be added to this channel too after they die. Or if you just want to chat with people from other communities, we have a general chat too that is unrelated to the Mafia Championship.

1) CLICK HERE TO JOIN: https: //discord . gg/3BtbmnR (without the spaces!)

2) Upon joining the server, please inform us of who you are and which community you are from. We will then give you the necessary permissions to see the spectator channel. This is necessary to avoid the wrong people (the representatives and their backups) joining the channel. You don't need to have Discord installed in order to join the channel, as there is a web version.

Do you want to have your own private community spectator chat?
This is definitely both allowed and encouraged. However, I ask that you please do everything possible to make this chat private and inaccessible to your representative, backup and your representative's opponents. It's important that your thoughts and comments don't influence the game. In other words, please don't post about the game in public threads -- this is very important.

---

Feel free to contact me at Arapocalypse#0834 if you have any questions!!!

Also this undertitle is amazing; I'll never be able to play here, to keep my postcount low for it!!

[bladescape]

Good luck Apogee!

[Batcathat]

Wooo! Go Apogee! Make us proud by sneakily stabbing and manipulating everyone and/or surviving everyone else's sneaky stabbing!

[Book Wombat]

What the others said and have a good game!

[Apogee1]

Thanks all!!

[JeenLeen]

In total there will be twenty-two Pathways with each nine Sequences. Sequence 9 is the lowest while Sequence 1 is the highest.

Examples for what I might do, feedback would be appreciated:

Note: Priority/order would be added.

Would the Pathways/Sequences be known to all players? If no, would the Sequence be known to the player who has it?
Would they be delineated as Town, Wolf, or Neutral?

Why I ask:
I think this could factor into the balance. One aspect of Mafia is testing people's claims, and powers mutating/growing over time makes it... well, not difficult to test what you did N1 specifically (assuming you retain all old powers), but harder to trust such tests since it might be that N2 you gained a power you fakeclaimed N1. If it's public info, that impacts how testing could go. My mind isn't really "clicking" to think of all the implications, but something to consider.

If the Pathways aren't publicly known, whether they are pre-assigned to Town, Wolf, or Neutral doesn't really matter. There's no public info to the Town, so the Town can't use that to catch a wolf or confirm a neutral.
But if it is publicly known, this answer obviously matters, just like how knowing the Wolf roles in Xi's Yugioh game led to catching them.
Based on the Demoness Pathway, I feel that they probably are delineated already. E.g., that looks like a Serial Killer Neutral.

You could have the Town Pathways be public, but Neutral and Wolf private.

If information is secret, as a player, I would prefer to know what my Sequence is. But I can see a fun dynamic as town or wolf of not really knowing what my power will be.
On the other hand, publicly sharing it could increase trust that the game is balanced. Balance is obviously a concern here, so having it up-front (or perhaps even posting your Sequences here for feedback before the game starts) could help. Also, just be fun to read this.

One pro of this system is I feel it could make it less likely of a surrender. Wolves got really unlucky early in gac3's game. But with powers changing... I feel like the wolves could make a comeback even if things went poorly earlier.

I don't completely understand how often the powers update. But, based on how short games seem to be here and that there's 9 "levels", I'd recommend it updating each Phase. Maybe waiting until D2 for the first "level up", if you feel that's too fast. Otherwise, we'd almost certainly not get anyone to level 9. Which is fine, but I feel takes away some of the fun.

::grumble:: I was thinking over this over the weekend, and had what I at least thought were useful thoughts to give as feedback. It seems I forgot most of it, so I feel like the above is me trying to sound clever while not actually giving good feedback. Sorry. I hope it at least helps some. I guess it just sums to the obvious "think about how much info being public or hidden matters" when deciding what to publicly state.

[Book Wombat]

Would the Pathways/Sequences be known to all players? If no, would the Sequence be known to the player who has it?
Would they be delineated as Town, Wolf, or Neutral?

Why I ask:
I think this could factor into the balance. One aspect of Mafia is testing people's claims, and powers mutating/growing over time makes it... well, not difficult to test what you did N1 specifically (assuming you retain all old powers), but harder to trust such tests since it might be that N2 you gained a power you fakeclaimed N1. If it's public info, that impacts how testing could go. My mind isn't really "clicking" to think of all the implications, but something to consider.

If the Pathways aren't publicly known, whether they are pre-assigned to Town, Wolf, or Neutral doesn't really matter. There's no public info to the Town, so the Town can't use that to catch a wolf or confirm a neutral.
But if it is publicly known, this answer obviously matters, just like how knowing the Wolf roles in Xi's Yugioh game led to catching them.
Based on the Demoness Pathway, I feel that they probably are delineated already. E.g., that looks like a Serial Killer Neutral.

You could have the Town Pathways be public, but Neutral and Wolf private.

If information is secret, as a player, I would prefer to know what my Sequence is. But I can see a fun dynamic as town or wolf of not really knowing what my power will be.
On the other hand, publicly sharing it could increase trust that the game is balanced. Balance is obviously a concern here, so having it up-front (or perhaps even posting your Sequences here for feedback before the game starts) could help. Also, just be fun to read this.

One pro of this system is I feel it could make it less likely of a surrender. Wolves got really unlucky early in gac3's game. But with powers changing... I feel like the wolves could make a comeback even if things went poorly earlier.

I don't completely understand how often the powers update. But, based on how short games seem to be here and that there's 9 "levels", I'd recommend it updating each Phase. Maybe waiting until D2 for the first "level up", if you feel that's too fast. Otherwise, we'd almost certainly not get anyone to level 9. Which is fine, but I feel takes away some of the fun.

::grumble:: I was thinking over this over the weekend, and had what I at least thought were useful thoughts to give as feedback. It seems I forgot most of it, so I feel like the above is me trying to sound clever while not actually giving good feedback. Sorry. I hope it at least helps some. I guess it just sums to the obvious "think about how much info being public or hidden matters" when deciding what to publicly state.

Thanks! Making the Pathways public is something I would do as a quick internet search brings them up anyway along with their powers (which I'm adapting), however I would redact some powers. I think some Pathways would always be Town, Wolf or Neutral, while others could be any one. Some powers might be replaced but usually they'll just be upgraded or more options will be added.
About the advancements, I hopefully made it a bit more balanced (and definitely not because I didn't want to create so many roles).

Spoiler: General Information and Advancements

Show

By consuming a potion made of special ingredients, one can become a Beyonder, someone with control over special powers. There are twenty-two potions which can be brewed granting access to one of the twenty-two Pathways, each encompassing a different concept.
The first potion grants control over their spiritual energy and the position as a Sequence 9, the weakest of Beyonders. To advance through the Sequences more potions must be brewed with increasingly rare materials and difficult recipes, a goal of almost all Beyonders as they seek to gain more power.
Those of Sequence 9 and 8 are known as Low-Rank Beyonders; Sequences 7, 6 and 5 are Mid-Rank and being a Sequence 4, 3, 2 or 1 grants the title of Demigod (High-Rank). Increasing one's rank brings on a qualitative change different to most advancements.

In the game each player starts as a Sequence 9 of a certain Pathway and advances after a certain number of Nights have passed; as a Low-Sequence at every Dawn while a Mid-Ranks will advance on every second Dawn. High-Ranks will not be used. Every player starts with one power, either Active or Passive. At Dawn 1 every player will either gain an Active or Passive power depending on their existing Power. On Nights after the first each player will either gain a new power or one of their current ones will be changed.

Also, Game 8 of the Mafia Championship has begun! May the worthy win!